Personality and prayer life?

Does your personality type affect the way you pray? Yes, according to Pablo Martinez, who as well as being a very popular speaker at Spring Harvest is also a psychiatrist, working in his native country, Spain.

His new book, Prayer Life - How your personality affects the way you pray, shows very clearly that different personality types have certain strengths - and weaknesses - in their spiritual life.

For instance, 'the extrovert's natural tendency is towards action rather than meditation; they will be the ones doing things in the church. Consequently, they find it difficult to maintain a regular prayer life. The more extrovert a person is, the more difficult they find it to pray and to concentrate when praying. Introverts, on the other hand, are much more methodical and will set time apart.' But, he goes on to say, prayer meetings in which people have to pray out loud are easier for extroverts than for introverts. 'Prayer meetings give extroverts the opportunity to relate with others, which is precisely the source of energy they need to start praying.'

People types

Pablo Martinez divides people into extroverts and introverts, and also into four main personality types - the thinking type, the feeling type, the sensation type and the intuitive type. No one is a pure type and everyone has a mixture, but one type will predominate in each person. Thus, thinking types tend to be rational, and not show their emotions much (though they do feel strongly); feeling types are far more comfortable with their emotions; sensation types concentrate on what they receive from their five senses - touch, sight, taste, hearing and so on, and are very spontaneous and childlike; while intuitives are the mystics among us. Each type will find certain types of spiritual activity come easily - for instance, sensation types may find worshipping God in response to beauty comes easily, while thinking types will use prayer lists that others will dismiss as making prayer into a time of working through a business agenda. Feeling types concentrate on the heart and can easily forget to use their reason; intuitives love freedom in prayer but can be poor at facing reality, particularly when that means praying for the needs of others.

So should Christians be concerned about the weaknesses of other types? Not according to Pablo Martinez - if anything, he urges Christians to celebrate their differences and, above all, to accept each other. 'Our human tendency is to reject behavioural patterns and temperaments that are different from our own. By nature we can be rather rigid and intolerant, approaching our neighbour in a judicial frame of mind. But we must understand that many of these differences do not stem from a greater or lesser amount of faith but are the result of the way we are. God has made us differently, and we must respect one another. There is no type of spirituality that, from the temperamental point of view, is superior to any other type. No one has the monopoly on prayer!' However, he does suggest that each type should be aware of their own weaknesses and should try, as far as they can, to overcome them.

Beginning from scratch?

Pablo believes a frequent misunderstanding among Christians is of the new nature that Christians receive on conversion. 'Some believers think that we can start from scratch in every area of our lives. It is as if the Holy Spirit cleans the slate of our personalities instantaneously, wiping off everything that corresponds to our past. This way of thinking reflects more an urgent emotional desire for change than a mature longing for Christ's likeness; the person longs to be completely transformed, to shake off the past. They have suffered so much that all they want to do is to forget; they desire to be born again almost literally!'

Total change?

Some keep moving house, or changing jobs, or changing their names - all these things reflect an intense desire to forget the past and to start again, to become a different person. Such people are so anxious to achieve this total change that they attribute to the Holy Spirit a role that was never his intention to play. Without doubt, the apostle Paul was right when he said: 'If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation - the old has gone, the new has come!' (2 Corinthians 5.17). But we cannot interpret this verse arbitrarily. Does it mean that those who have blue eyes will get brown eyes on conversion? Does it mean that our temperaments will be changed and all our memories forgotten? No. If we approach the work of the Holy Spirit in this way we will be very disappointed and frustrated. Christ gives us new life in the sense that he puts a new nature within us. This produces radical changes: different attitudes, a different perspective on life, a new dignity, a solid sense of personal identity, a new hope for the future, and so on. But God does not promise us the elimination of our painful past or of our limitations here on earth. It is very naive to expect the Holy Spirit to be a 100% effective psychiatrist. He does not produce a total change in our personalities.

The Bible and psychiatry

As a Christian psychiatrist, Pablo is very familiar with those who find it difficult to reconcile the two things - and who would almost see the term 'Christian psychiatrist' as an oxymoron. Isn't there a huge conflict between the main schools of psychiatry and what the Bible teaches? He has a strong defence. 'A good part of the mistrust that some people have about a Christian being a psychiatrist stems from a lack of information. Human beings have a tendency to attack those things that are unknown! Psychiatry is a medical speciality, which deals with the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness and emotional disturbances. As such it involves biology and medicine - but also anthropology and sociology. It needs to have a theory of human personality'-presumably because you can't treat the abnormal until you have some idea of what the normal is - 'but the psychiatrist's goal is not to present a set of life values or a lifestyle to their patient. Respect for the beliefs and opinions of the patient is a basic principle of a good professional practice.'

While agreeing that some theories of the nature of man current in some psychiatric thinking are anti-Christian, Pablo also argues that it is possible and necessary to have a biblical view of man, and on this basis he has built his psychiatric practice and beliefs. He went into psychiatry partly because he came from a good family: 'I always had the desire to share my good upbringing for the benefit of others. And as there were very few Christian psychiatrists in my country, I felt a deep need to cover this vacuum in the church there.'

Christian insight

What can a Christian psychiatrist offer a patient that a non-Christian psychiatrist can't?

'They can bring compassion, discernment and help based on a Bible-centred framework, and they also have the advantage of the Holy Spirit as counsellor.' Christians need to understand themselves, Pablo believes, in order to deal with their own wrong behaviours and relational problems, 'which are the result of blind spots in our personalities which make us deceive ourselves and use wrong defence mechanisms. Christians can gain very good insights about their problems and grow into maturity as a result of counselling. A healthy amount of self-knowledge, guided and inspired by biblical principles, can be very therapeutic.'
What has he found are the main areas in which Christians are confused or have wrong views concerning the way they are and the way they should behave? 'For me, one of the most urgent areas is that of forgiveness, reconciliation and really accepting other people. Self esteem is another area. Between the humanist view that makes self esteem the centre of everything and the extreme attitude of some Christians who reject the very idea of self esteem, lies a biblically-balanced view on the subject of identity and self worth that is necessary for any person. And another area is that of guilt and sin: some extremes here are very damaging.'

There has been an explosion in counselling in the last few years. How can a Christian looking for counselling know how to find someone who will not do them harm? And what are the dangers to avoid? 'A good counsellor is the one who is able to offer you three things: empathy - you feel understood, listened to and cared for: they offer light, discernment and guidance - you are helped to think and find your own "way out", and, finally, they offer a framework that allows you to grow and mature. The main danger comes when counselling becomes the main priority in your life. This may happen and then it is likely to be a form of religion. Truth is not found, ultimately, in self-knowledge, but in the knowledge of Christ.'

Ali Hull

Copies of Pablo's book on this subject (published by Paternoster Press, 176 pages, £7.99, ISBN 1 85078 436 1) are available free from EN to the first ten requests by surface mail.